They were the glue that held so many relationships together.

Since their first meeting in Ms. Gladstone’s Grade 6 class at Brown’s School, Dylan Ellis and Oliver Martin were inseparable. Whether they were playing baseball or skateboarding around the neighbourhood with their bleached-blond hair blowing in the wind, their magnetism attracted everyone around them. In their first group interview since the shooting deaths of
Mr. Ellis and Mr. Martin two weeks ago, friends and family searched for words to describe
the closeness the 25-year-olds shared.

“It was like a phrase: Dylan and Oliver,” friend Brendan Jones said.

“They were brothers,” Oliver’s stepfather, Alan Dudeck, said of the two young men who were sitting together in an SUV outside a Richmond Street condo when the tragedy occurred.

Crammed in the Martin family’s front room so close their knees were touching, 13 of the people closest to Mr. Ellis and Mr. Martin spoke of how the pair took friends under their wings and expanded their closeknit group to about 20 guys.

“It wasn’t just like ‘one kid, one kid, one kid.’ It was just this friendship, this family of guys. It’d
just gotten to be a bigger family and more brought in,” said Mr. Ellis’s mother, Karen Ellis-Elia. The Martin and Ellis households became hubs of activity, thanks to the friendships Mr. Ellis and Mr. Martin maintained. “That was one of the big impressions – coming down the stairs and all of a sudden seeing these size 12 shoes all over the hallway,” said Mr. Martin’s mother, Susan, with the family’s King Charles spaniel, Archie, snoring on her lap. “How did that happen?
They seemed to be these little kids.” Ms. Martin said the boys were so close, they shared their own language. “They’d just be sitting together, and you’d think there was nothing going on, and they’d look at each other and go, ‘Eh, yup.’ And off they’d go. “And you’d think, ‘What just transpired here?’ ” she said. Their innate knowledge of one another helped balance their very different personalities – Mr. Ellis was laidback, while Mr. Martin was more likely to sweat the details. “When one needed fire, the other one gave it. When one needed cooling down, the other gave it,” Ms. Ellis-Elia said.

Mr. Ellis, Mr. Martin and friend Ben McPhee started an online magazine in university called 2.0, the name a reference to a passing grade-point average. Mr. McPhee wrote articles, Mr. Ellis took photos and Mr. Martin promoted the magazine to secure enough advertising to go to print. Even after a full workweek, they visited university campuses in the area to scout and secure locations for the magazine, which consisted of funfilled articles, including one about a Lord of the Rings fantasy camp.

Mr. Martin and friend Andrew Gilchrist joined the mock battle, and Mr. Ellis hung in the trees, snapping photos. The mood in the Martin home Thursday evening often shifted from laughter to gravity as the boys were lovingly described as equal parts goofy and industrious. At one point, Mr. Martin’s girlfriend came through the door with her mother. She stood in the front foyer among the size 12 shoes and collapsed into tears in Ms. Martin’s arms. The young woman, who witnessed the fatal shooting from the backseat of the SUV, hasn’t spoken to the news media. Mr. Ellis and Mr. Martin’s final night alive was like any other, friends said. Mr. Ellis
went home after his day job at Elevator Digital, a photography company, before heading downtown to a condo at Richmond and Niagara Streets rented by friends Peter Ruta and Mr. Gilchrist. They watched the NBA playoff game with a group of friends – just a typical Thursday night.

By 7 p.m., Mr. Ellis was hungry. He borrowed Mr. Gilchrist’s keys and headed over to Fresh, a  vegetarian restaurant on Queen Street at the edge of Trinity Bellwoods Park. “There was a tofu dish he really liked there,” Mr. Gilchrist said. Mr. Martin, who worked in sales at Russell Investments, popped by the apartment a bit later and left again to pick up his girlfriend.
In the meantime, they went to a friend’s apartment and had banana chocolate milkshakes
before returning to the condo around 9 p.m., just as the game began.
The Los Angeles Lakers were far ahead before halftime, and the 10 friends were thinking about turning off the TV.

But they kept it on when their favourite, the Boston Celtics, pulled ahead. “After the Celtics started coming back, we started getting pretty into the game, pretty excited, jumping around like we usually do when we get together, just crawl all over each other with big smiles,” Mr. Gilchrist said. When the game ended – with one of the biggest NBA finals comebacks since 1971 – Mr. Gilchrist realized Mr. Ellis still had his keys from that earlier jaunt to Fresh. He called Mr. Ellis on his cellphone and, “as Dylan would always do, he said, ‘No problem, I’ll drive them back to you.’ “That’s when they came back.” Mr. Ellis and Mr. Martin’s bond lasted through the fatal shots that pierced the windshield. Police had made no arrests as of yesterday. Lead investigator Detective Sergeant Gary Giroux said this week that the investigation is progressing. “What we’re ultimately going to determine is that these victims do not know their attacker,” he said this week. “I remain steadfast in that there was a precipitating event that caused these two homicides to take place.” On Thursday, Ms. Ellis-Elia recalled being at the hospital with Ms. Martin when doctors told them neither son survived.

“We looked at each other and thought one of them wasn’t going to let the other one go by himself,” she said. Ms. Martin shifted her gaze to Ms. Ellis-Elia. Their eyes locked.

“The only comfort Karen and I had in all of this,” she said, “was that Oliver and Dylan
are together.”